Crab or creature ID

[kjardine519]

I found this in my tank today while burning some aptasia off rocks

:wave:

 

[sam.basye]

Little squat lobster?

 

[Maritimer]

Sam, you took the words right out of my mouth!

Looks very much like a squat lobster to me. Don't know how reef-safe they are, but they've got claws, so I'd exercise caution . . .

~Bruce

 

[donut0079]

I believe they are completely reef safe. Similar to a porcelain crab.

 

[kjardine519]

I haven't introduced anything new to the tank in over a year... so they must not get very big or this is a baby

 

[kjardine519]

Body is roughly the size of a pencil eraser. Full span about the size of a dime

 

[donut0079]

A lot of them stay pretty small. Most are commensal with some other species. Some with feather stars but they are not needed. The last one I saw on here rode around on the shell of a hermit crab.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Yep, squat lobster and I must say a very cool hitchhiker! From all that I've read about them they're reef safe. You should do a Google image search for them and see all of the beautiful colorful ones there are.

 

[jraker]

squat lobsters are actually crabs. they are names lobsters because of their body shape. they are reef safe and will host crinoids if you are crazy enough to keep one

 

[Betta132]

Squat "lobster", technically a crab, very reef-safe. Won't get large enough to hurt anything short of maybe an amphipod, mostly a scavenger, comes in loads of colors.
Don't put one with a crinoid, they steal the crinoid's food and make it even harder to keep the featherpuff alive. They don't need to host a crinoid to survive, they scavenge and can be fed anything you give the rest of the tank.

 

[Calappidae]

will host crinoids

This particular species won't. The only squats that host crinioids would be the striped crinoid squat lobsters.

Some will host sponges as well.

Anemone porcelain crabs are basically filterfeeding squat lobsters that host anemones.

Some will host coral.

That's about it I think, I don't think this guy hitchhiking will host anything except coral skeleton.